The Personal Excellence Podcast

The Personal Excellence Podcast shares tips and strategies to live your best life, covering topics from how to live a purposeful life, to dealing with life's setbacks, to relationship tips, to productivity strategies.

We Are On CNN! (Bucket Lists and Life)

Some of you might have read in some of my earlier posts that I was interviewed by CNN! It’s finally up! 😀 The article is on the topic of bucket lists and what it means to different people. I was interviewed to share my take on bucket lists, what it means to me and how it relates to living in excellence.
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Here’s the section I was quoted:

Celestine Chua, who has never seen the TV series, came across the bucket list concept while surfing the Internet in 2009.

The 25-year-old from Singapore eventually decided to write her own bucket list, which she shares with the public on her Web site as a reminder to “live every moment to the fullest when you’re in good health.”

Despite already opening her own school for personal development in Singapore and starting an online talk show, Chua said she thinks No. 14, “experience true love,” will be the most challenging goal to accomplish.

“You might think [a bucket list is] just a list of goals, but if you’re really thinking about things you want to see, experience and feel before you die, then the whole concept of setting goals is totally different,” Chua said. “When we start thinking about what we want to do before we die, our goals become totally different. Fall in love, see the Empire State building. That’s the magic of the bucket list — it removes limits.”

They linked to my bucket list in the article, so we are getting a whole stream of visitors from CNN.com now. As I’m writing now, my web server is starting to jam up from the huge influx of traffic.

I know, I mentioned experiencing truelove will be the most challenging goal to accomplish. I’m sure many people out there feel the same way too. But hey, I believe as long as we persist in this journey, we will get there 🙂

There were other interesting things I discussed with Stephanie (the journalist) during the interview but didn’t make it in the story. For example:

Everyone’s bucket list will be different, because our bucket list is supposed to reflect the things that mean most to us in living our best life. For example, my list has quirky stuff like riding a camel, dressing up in a costume party (I love masquerading!), swimming with dolphines etc due to the spontaneous, fun-loving side of me, and then there’s the items that reflect the romantic idealist in me such as flying in a hot air balloon, stargazing, and experiencing true love. Thus, the goal isn’t to get a bucket list that’s the same as mine or his or hers, but to create a bucket list that’s true for you yourself.

Bucket lists act as a medium to help us live our best life. Hence, it’s important that we don’t get hung up over trying to accomplish our bucket list items that we miss living itself. It’s about the journey of living life to the fullest, every second, every moment.

Your bucket list is never ending. Just as you finish the items, you’ll add new ones as they come along. There is absolutely no reason why our bucket list should ever be empty. There is such an incredible wealth of things, events, activities, experiences to witness/go through in life that it’s impossible that we will ever be done with living. This is why my bucket list is never going to be empty. I’m continuously completing and adding on new items that will help me live my life to the fullest.

By the way , #46 of my list is to be featured in international media, which will include CNN. So this interview helped me achieve one of my list items. 😀 I feel very blessed. Thanks so much guys for all your ongoing support 😀